SUITE FOR SOLO VIOLA

Editor's Note:

Nancy Van de Vate’s Suite for Solo Viola, in five movements, was written a decade after her first major excursion for viola - the 1964 Sonata for Viola and Piano - and a year before her great Music for Viola, Percussion, and Piano. This perhaps explains some of the extreme, rapid style changes (even allowing for the eccentricity of Van de Vate’s style) throughout the Suite, as Van de Vate sought to further explore the abilities of the viola as a single entity. Generally, however, these style changes serve a more distinct purpose - they are themselves musical variations on themes and intervals.

Consider the interval of the seventh, which appears again and again. The opening statement in the first movement moves from B-flat to A, then from E to E-flat; the second movement’s first measure drops from D-flat to D; the third movement varies this with a minor seventh, but returns to the major seventh in the fourth movement. The finale begins with more of an emphasis on the tritone and ninth, but contracts in measure 18 to the seventh for restatement and development. These movements, which all hold distinct stylistic tendencies, nonetheless are tightly bound by the shared intervallic tension.